Egyptian-Czech arms deal

The Egyptian-Czech arms deal took place in September 1955 when Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt agreed to buy $250,000,000 worth of Soviet Union-made weaponry through the USSR ally of Czechoslovakia. Nasser, a socialist and Arab nationalist, aligned himself towards the Eastern Bloc, and it greatly politicized the Arab-Israeli Conflict. The United States began to supply an equal amount of weaponry to Israel to fight proxy wars with the Soviet-backed Arab nationalist governments in the Middle East, and the arms deal was a turning point for the Cold War as well as politics in the Middle East.